Re: Linux/IA-64 byte order

Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
9 Mar 1999 19:07:34 GMT

In article <36E5678C.380F3E33@t-online.de>,
Hans-Peter Jansen <hpj.lisa@t-online.de> wrote:
>>
>> The computing world would be better off with just one byte order, that
>> byte order isn't going to be BE.
>
>Take it easy, BE folks, LE is better, because i.e. error detection
>of network protocols, which are normally BE. If you coders forget to
>swap a single short, LE will easily show up (aka. won't work).

I appreciate the sarcasm, but that isn't my point.

My POINT is that there is absolutely no technical reason to prefer one
over the other.

And like it or not, LE is very dominant due to PC's and the MS inability
to work with BE machines on NT. So LE isn't going away any time soon.

In short, the best we can hope for is to just end the confusion, and
that BE will fade. No, I don't think that's likely either, but it's
better than having two different byteorders with no technical reason to
chose between the two.

Avoid confusion.

Linus

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